[http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/ XVidCap] is a free software used for recording a screencast or digital recording of an X Window System screen output with an audio narration. With it you can make a movie of anything running on under X.

[http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/ XVidCap] is a free software used for recording a screencast or digital recording of an X Window System screen output with an audio narration. With it you can make a movie of anything running on under X.

Revision as of 17:06, 26 July 2015

XVidCap is a free software used for recording a screencast or digital recording of an X Window System screen output with an audio narration. With it you can make a movie of anything running on under X.

Note: Xvidcap is no longer maintained and some parts do no work any longer (like the ability to encode to video).

"Xvidcap is a small tool to capture things going on on an X-Windows display to either individual frames or an MPEG video. On Windows machines there are commercial tools like Lotus ScreenCam or Camtasia which do a very good job esp. for the purpose I was needing such a tool for: Software documentation, esp. installation procedures and such.

On UNIX machines I have searched for a comparable tool for a long time with little luck. Some day, I came across a program written by Rasca Gmelch which went a good way, just not quite there. It was able to capture to individual frames and save them in indivdual screenshots (which can be converted into a video with tools like transcode.)

This approach for me required more storage than I had available, so I added an on-line encoding facility using FFMPEG's libavcodec/libavformat. And since Rasca no longer has the time to maintain his code, I took over and the code to sourceforge.

Today, I suppose xvidcap does its basic job, though I find bugs and possible improvements every day. If you are a developer, appreciate a tool like xvidcap, and want to help improve it, contact me at the sourceforge site."

Installation

Usage

Using the software is pretty self-explanatory. Be sure to select the desired framerate prior to starting a capture. As well, setup the quality level and video codec of your choice. Do not forget to save your preferences.